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Relationship of Marxism to Progressive Policies and the Virtues or Risks Thereof

Emily's Cat said:
The gambling aspect has gotten far out of control, and that's made even worse by derivative markets. The problem, as I see it, is that I don't see any reasonable way to eliminate (or even reduce) the gambling aspect, so long as stock remains a publicly tradeable commodity in its own right.
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Isn't that the idea behind A and B shares, where the B shares gives you the revenue but no influence incorporates the gambling aspect, whereas the A shares mean real ownership?
 
steenkh said:
The systems programmers I was part of at my work were proud of being slothful. In fact, so slothful that there was no end to the effort we would into automation so that we would not have to do any work at all …
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I divide my officers into four classes as follows: the clever, the industrious, the lazy, and the stupid. Each officer always possesses two of these qualities. Those who are clever and industrious I appoint to the General Staff. Use can under certain circumstances be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy qualifies for the highest leadership posts. He has the requisite and the mental clarity for difficult decisions. But whoever is stupid and industrious must be got rid of, for he is too dangerous.
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I divide my officers into four classes as follows: the clever, the industrious, the lazy, and the stupid. Each officer always possesses two of these qualities. Those who are clever and industrious I appoint to the General Staff. Use can under certain circumstances be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy qualifies for the highest leadership posts. He has the requisite and the mental clarity for difficult decisions. But whoever is stupid and industrious must be got rid of, for he is too dangerous.
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In the United States we elect them.
 
Emily's Cat said:
You know we're talking about two different people, using two different vehicles, manufactured by two different companies, using two different welding machines and probably two different welders, right?

Alex having a plane manufactured by Gulfstream has no effect on Sam buying a Kia.
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Counterpoint: There are very few competent elevator installation and maintenance companies in Portland. Fewer companies than there is demand for their services. You'd think that this would create an opportunity for a competitor to enter the market, but apparently this isn't the case. The barriers to entry must be pretty daunting.

Anyway, our building has two elevators. Historically, they have been serviced by Thyssen-Krupp Elevators, one of the top service providers in the city. But their customer service sucks, and their contracts are written to favor them at the expense of their customers. Still, there's only two other companies in town, and neither of them are really up to the task of servicing our elevators. So, we hired a former TKE employee to act as a broker/advisor. He helped us negotiate a better contract, just in time for our major elevator upgrade project.

So now we're contracted with TKE to upgrade both our elevators. And the project has been delayed several times because of other commitments they have with other customers in town, who are also desperate for one of the three overbooked service providers to fit them in. So sometimes, no, it isn't two different people in two different trucks with two different tool boxes. Sometimes it's one provider, and they get to pick and choose which customers get serviced when.
 
Emily's Cat said:
The older I get, and the more I watch the world change... the more I think that the problem isn't limited liability, it's the stock market. It's the process of turning shares into commoditized items to be traded without a real connection to the underlying value and expected outcomes of the company on which the shares are based.
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Could you elaborate a bit more on these reservations and the problems you believe stock markets cause?
 
Emily's Cat said:
Avoiding a derail, originally from here:
Blue Mountain

Post in thread 'So what form does the resistance take?'

Emily's Cat said:
Universal basic income, maximization of leisure time as an objective, destruction of meritocracy, teaching to the lowest common denominator and removing programs for gifted children, presumed oppression as a basis for monetary reward in the form of reparations or unearned incomes, expansion of the social safety net to encompass discomfort rather than strict need, socially funded medical services that cover more than critical care and necessary treatment, an ever-expanding list of required "preventive" screenings and treatments as free services, living wages for part-time jobs that...
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Marx' approach was strictly based on class, even though such classes were poorly defined. That said, the foundation of Marx's approach was premised on an insurmountable conflict between the 'oppressed' and the 'oppressor'. Woven throughout their philosophy is an unspoken assumption that each can only be one thing, and that there's no overlap between them. That of course is an absurd notion... but philosophy in general quite frequently oversimplifies complex relationships.

Many progressive notions are also based on this oppressed vs oppressor assumption, and they often exhibit the same style of oversimplification that Marx assumed. Race relations in the US, for example, are framed as if it's inescapably black vs white, and as if black people can only be viewed as oppressed and white people can only be viewed as oppressor. That's the underlying premise of anti-racism, and it's embedded throughout critical race theory. It's also the foundational framework for queer theory, gender studies, and modern liberal feminism, among many other topics. While it's rarely stated outright, there's a common thematic approach in these progressive concepts that frames whoever has been labeled 'oppressor' as being malicious and selfish, motivated purely by greed and a desire for power over others; similarly it frames the 'oppressed' as being powerless, noble, and it excuses them from any responsibility for their own outcomes.

Me... I'm a bit more pragmatic. People are not black and white. Nobody is wholly evil, and nobody is wholly good, nobody has complete control over the course of their lives, but neither are they impotent to alter that course.

Honestly, I don't think I'm "right" at all. I have very few views that are even conservative, and those are based in the concept of fiduciary responsibility rather than political ideology. Most of my views are historically liberal, some are libertarian. My general approach is to maximize personal freedom within reason, minimize the opportunity to infringe upon the freedom of others, provide collective benefit for those few things that are inefficient in a competitive market (utilities, for example), provide a minimum viable safety net that focuses on 'teaching a person to fish' and enables progress toward self-sufficiency, and a market that includes well-thought out regulation for consumer protection against exploitation and profiteering, and a very strict respect for personal privacy provided nobody is being harmed. To me, there's rarely a singular solution to any problem, it's a matter of finding a balance that works best for most people most of the time.

Probably to a lesser degree. I think we currently have too much wealth inequality... but I also think that some inequality is necessary for innovation. In order to take risks on new ideas, new technologies, new ventures, we need to have at least some people who have enough wealth that the marginal value of a few million is relatively low for them to be willing to invest in something that could be a complete loss. On the other hand, I have some serious philosophical qualms about that capital being in the hands of companies and corporations, especially if those companies are publicly traded. Over the years, I've started to think that stock markets might be a bad idea...

I'm not in favor of programs that prioritize anyone on the basis of external characteristics; I'm adamantly opposed to programs that deprioritize anyone on the basis of those characteristics. I believe that externalities should be irrelevant in the vast majority of cases. I grew up as the child of a black step-father, with a mixed sister, in a military household, during a time when the military had a high proportion of foreign service members. I LOVE learning about other cultures, other languages, other traditions, and being exposed to all the beauty that is humanity. But I also value diversity of viewpoint, and I think that's a more important goal than skin color. I also think that when there are standards that are necessary for the competent and safe performance of a role, those standards should be inflexible, regardless of what some people might consider extenuating circumstances. For example... as much of a feminist as I am, I think it's abhorrent to have different strength and fitness requirements for female firefighters than for male. If I'm in a burning building, I don't care that my local fire station has a 50/50 ratio of females, I only care that they can carry my unconscious spouse out of the house so they don't die.

I have two objections to UBI. The first is philosophical in that I don't think anyone else should be obligated to keep me alive and see to my needs. The mere fact that I got born some 50-odd years ago doesn't give me the right to continue being alive at someone else's expense. I am all for needs-based assistance paired with a 'graduation program' that moves people out of that state of need, and I support voluntary charity as much as possible (I think go fund me and similar things are an absolutely fantastic invention that allows large numbers of people to chip in small amounts to help others out). The second objection is funding and sustainability. The tests that have been done were all small scale and externally funded - the money to provide the UBI was provided by grant by third parties interested in seeing if it altered behavior. It hasn't been tested in a scenario where it needs to be self-sustaining, nor has it been tested over a long period of time. I think the intent is great, but I think the application is doomed. Consider it a differential equation across a time-series: all it takes is a relatively small number of freeloaders to start an increasing scale of contributions from a shrinking population of contributors. And once it extends to a second generation who has never known a world without it, I think the risk of freeloading will grow very quickly. I think it's an inherently unstable scheme.

Commuting is an entirely separate issue, and I'm of the opinion that highly centralized maga-corporations paired with gentrification is the biggest culprit here.

Healthy is not the same as comfort. As I've already said, I think our social safety nets should be minimum viable and intentionally paired with programs to remove dependence. It should be a "break glass in case of emergency" thing, not a base expectation.

Alternatively... the social funding could be based on critical care, with a private market that addresses non-critical needs. I'm a health insurance actuary, and that's where my view comes from. The way our system currently works incorporates a whole lot of routine care that isn't actually the province of insurance at all. It would be like expecting your auto insurance to cover all of our oil changes, routine maintenance, and give you a fresh set of tires every couple of years - it would quickly become unaffordable for a large number of people. It also ends up absolving consumers of responsibility for that maintenance. Even worse, it ends up providing an incentive for the providers of those services to charge ever higher prices, because the cost to value ratio is hidden via the spreading of risk. How much do you think tire manufacturers would charge for a new set of goodyears if they knew that everyone's auto insurance was *required* to pay for them every couple of years? What do you think that would do the auto premiums?

Encourage yes, require no. Like I said - I'm happy for all those preventive measures to exist, but I object to other people being expected to pay for them when those services don't protect the public as a whole. And I'll also admit to being a bit peevish about this one - there are a whole lot of actual preventive medicines that aren't covered as "preventive". I'm epileptic, and the cost of my anti-seizure medicine is absurd, especially since it's been generic for 17 years and is the most commonly prescribed and safest one available. It literally prevents me from having potentially lethal seizures. I'm not above pettiness, but I at least try to be aware of it when it happens :).

Why not? People could just a couple generations ago. This is a flaw with poorly regulated capitalism in a publicly traded stock market that provides a perverse incentive to move low-skilled work to developing nations and exploit children and poor people with no oversight for working conditions. There are tons of potential low-skill manufacturing, assembly, and industrial jobs that 99.99% of people in the US could do. But large companies seeking profit on behalf of shareholders offshored everything, thus depriving US citizens of a whole lot of employment.

Opinions vary, but this might be one of the views I hold that actually *is* fairly conservative: Each nation should have a duty to prioritize the needs and opportunities of its own citizens above the profits of shareholders - especially if those shares can be purchased by foreign investors. I think it's irresponsible to have a system in which US businesses end up prioritizing the returns for foreign investors above the quality of life of their fellow citizens.

I'd definitely prefer an effective mitigation approach to a treatment after the fact approach. But effectiveness is paramount - I think it's negligent of a country to use the fruit of the labor of its citizens to play around and experiment in ways that a reasonably intelligent and prudent person would easily recognize as extremely likely to fail or be counterproductive.
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My fingers are cramping just from reading that.
 
Trausti said:
Ah, that's what makes socialism so great.
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But that's capitalism in this situation.

It should be noted that there are many needs that capitalism and market forces don't, won't or can't address. Sometimes, it's because the needs are not substantial enough. Sometimes, it's because of crony capitalism, sometimes it's because it's too large a project and not enough capital. Sometimes it's over regulation. Sometimes it's monopolies and trusts.
 
acbytesla said:
But that's capitalism in this situation.
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Nonsense. In capitalism competitors can enter the market and offer alternatives. That others haven't done so in Portland has nothing to do with capitalism. In socialism there's the state and the black market. That's it.
 
Trausti said:
Nonsense. In capitalism competitors can enter the market and offer alternatives. That others haven't done so in Portland has nothing to do with capitalism.
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Of course it does. Portland is in the United States. Elevator maintenance is a business in Portland. What part of this don't you understand?
Trausti said:
In socialism there's the state and the black market. That's it.
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First of all socialism is different things to different people. It's not very well defined. Everything is not necessarily state owned.
 
theprestige said:
Counterpoint: There are very few competent elevator installation and maintenance companies in Portland. Fewer companies than there is demand for their services. You'd think that this would create an opportunity for a competitor to enter the market, but apparently this isn't the case. The barriers to entry must be pretty daunting.

Anyway, our building has two elevators. Historically, they have been serviced by Thyssen-Krupp Elevators, one of the top service providers in the city. But their customer service sucks, and their contracts are written to favor them at the expense of their customers. Still, there's only two other companies in town, and neither of them are really up to the task of servicing our elevators. So, we hired a former TKE employee to act as a broker/advisor. He helped us negotiate a better contract, just in time for our major elevator upgrade project.

So now we're contracted with TKE to upgrade both our elevators. And the project has been delayed several times because of other commitments they have with other customers in town, who are also desperate for one of the three overbooked service providers to fit them in. So sometimes, no, it isn't two different people in two different trucks with two different tool boxes. Sometimes it's one provider, and they get to pick and choose which customers get serviced when.
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The question is then, what are the barriers to entry? Does Portland or the State of Oregon have licensing and bond requirements that add barriers? Has TKE managed to get some regulatory capture? If so, that's not exactly a failing of capitalism or markets. Its, rent seeking enabled by government power.
 
ahhell said:
The question is then, what are the barriers to entry? Does Portland or the State of Oregon have licensing and bond requirements that add barriers? Has TKE managed to get some regulatory capture? If so, that's not exactly a failing of capitalism or markets. Its, rent seeking enabled by government power.
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Except it's the nature of free markets to close the doors behind established companies. The regulations are often promoted and lobbied for by them.
 
Poem said:
Could you elaborate a bit more on these reservations and the problems you believe stock markets cause?
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here's an interesting explanation of one of the problems the stock market has caused, particularly because so many passive investment accounts (401k) are tied into it. this guy, mike green, talks about this quite a bit and goes into way more detail if you look around the internet. and makes a pretty compelling case.
 
ahhell said:
The question is then, what are the barriers to entry? Does Portland or the State of Oregon have licensing and bond requirements that add barriers? Has TKE managed to get some regulatory capture? If so, that's not exactly a failing of capitalism or markets. Its, rent seeking enabled by government power.
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As far as I can tell, it's just that elevator maintenance is complex and expensive, and there just isn't enough room in the market for additional competitors.

Kind of like how there's only one company in the whole world that makes extreme ultraviolet photolithography machines, despite the huge demand for such.
 
Since this is a thread with some nominal link to Marxism: The "theoretical" end point of the ideology of capitalism is for one person to own everything. Now economists will say that wouldn't happen but that's by adding additional ideas into the ideology yet in the real world what we see is that monopolies will arise unless there are laws that prevent that.

I would say that Marx's description of capitalism (as it was conceived back then) and his critique of it is supported by the evidence. Which shouldn't be surprising if you look at recorded history, what we see is that unless force is used one person does effectively end up owning everything.

(Note: This is not saying that Marx's ideology would work or that I agree with it - I don't.)
 
Darat said:
Since this is a thread with some nominal link to Marxism: The "theoretical" end point of the ideology of capitalism is for one person to own everything. Now economists will say that wouldn't happen but that's by adding additional ideas into the ideology yet in the real world what we see is that monopolies will arise unless there are laws that prevent that.

I would say that Marx's description of capitalism (as it was conceived back then) and his critique of it is supported by the evidence. Which shouldn't be surprising if you look at recorded history, what we see is that unless force is used one person does effectively end up owning everything.

(Note: This is not saying that Marx's ideology would work or that I agree with it - I don't.)
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The Russian oligarchy, and the tech and media broligarchy are rather chilling examples of this.
 
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